How Nasty Will The 2012 Elections Be?

Asked how low and mean Rick Perry will go, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said,"he'll make your television bleed and you'll have to beg for mercy."

Rick Perry has retrenched his faltering campaign by hiring W's 2000 campaign manager and staffers from the failed Dole campaign. His own fund-raising efforts include the interesting proliferation of maximum donations from children of older Perry donors. And his Super Pac, legally to be unconnected to his campaign, is married to it through personnel. But Perry is dropping like a rock in the polls.

He claims he may actually sit out one of the debate because it's unlikely he will get any better. And he is playing with the birther issue, which he admitted was a distraction. But it was actually a shrew move because he's only interested in the primaries and hinting at the birther issue gives the nutballs on the base something to cheer about. While economists have blasted his flat tax proposal, others have pointed out that it wasn't concocted to be realistic or please experts, it was to appeal to conservatives and the wealthy. Steve Forbes, who ran in 1996 on the flat tax, is crowing that Perry will be the nominee.

Perry can campaign in the gutter. He once ran against an Hispanic Texan billionaire and by the end of the race he made Texans believe the man had killed drug dealers because he was in a rival gang. None of this was true but he loves negative. So if he's the nominee, expect to hear things about President Obama that will defy belief.

Herman Cain is now the putative frontrunner, even though he has no organization or money. Gallup says that he has actually accomplished the miraculous--becoming a household name within the shortest time in polling records. While people think of him as the Godfather Pizza man, he actually had been a lobbyist and had worked for the Americans for Prosperity afterwards. Almost the entire last years of Cain's career has been funded by the Koch brothers. Recently he hired a number of Americans for Prosperity staffers for the campaign. The question is whether there can actually be an astroturf candidate without grassroots support. On policy issues, Cain just wavers and fails to connect but no one actually cares. Karl Rove keeps pronouncing Cain dead b ut then again Karl missed our Witch Lady O'Connell in Delware.

The Newt has risen from the dead in polls and may actually get into the top 3 by the time of the early primaries. Newt is now benefiting from his chiding other candidates for bickering in the debates and showing Republican division. Newt still has his religious Right network available in Iowa once Michelle Bachmann officials exits the scene.

Bishop Willard Romney remains the actual front-runner. But it is astonishing that a man who has been running for over 6 years for President still only hits 23-24% of the Republican vote. This appears to be his ceiling, making him the weakest frontrunner that I can remember. Willard now changes his positions every other day, not just from the 1990s. His strange reversal of positions in Ohio over the union-busting law not only cost him conservative voters, including organizations who back him, but only emphasized his absolute political opportunism. By now, the Democrats can not even exhaust the number of issues Romney has reversed himself on--recently or even decades ago. Even his statement in Nevada, which has the highest foreclosures in the country, that foreclosures should be accelerated for private investors contradicts his statements on Bush's program to bail out underwater homeowners. Romney attacked Obama for declaring the Iraq war over. One wonders whether he will urge re-invading Iraq. With the rise of the occupy Wall Street movement, Romney's own wealth and the way he made his money has now been brought into focus and it is a net negative. But Romney is known as a vicious, nasty businessman by his peers and colleagues and his attacks in the general election will be through surrogates.

Conservatives are beginning to panic again. Already the American Spectator is running trial balloons for a Bobby Jindal candidacy since he just overwhelmingly won re-election as Lousiana's governor. Billy Kristol won't accept that the race is filled and wants Paul Ryan of couponcare fame as a candidate. That's all the Republicans need--reminding everyone of the House's budget plan which would have ended Medicare as we know it and plunge the nation deeper and deeper in debt. But the concern is real.

The nasty stuff is being acted out at the state level. The Voter suppression efforts in states from Florida to Wisconsin are aimed at core constituencies of the Democrats--minorities, labor and students. Basically write-off all the nonsense in Huffington Post about Obama losing support in key constituencies. He's not. It's just whether they will be allowed to vote. Ironically as Tunisia boasted a trunout of about 90%, the United States is obsessed with shrinking the electorate. And the Republicans are heavily banking on their Super Pacs of anonymous contributions to level the playing field with the Obama campaign and the Democrats. But as Karl Rove honestly stated in his memo to the staff of Crossroads America, the arguments of the Occupy Wall Street movement are winning the political argument and putting the Republicans on the defensive. Then if you run Mr. Fat Cat himself, Mitt Romney, you have a delicious target.

The conservatives' ideological war against unions is aimed at eliminating a funding base for the Democratic Party. But they have a serious problem with the backlash against this. Firefighters, the Police and Teamsters have historically leaned Republican. And , as I noted before, 1 million members of the NEA are also Republicans. The frontal assault on these unions have dramatically turned this tide so that the so-called Reagan democrats, the blue-collar worker, has been forcibly thrown out of the Republican Party by the conservatives who won in 2010. They are not coming back this election and maybe not for a long time.

In my opinion, the Republicans have lost the national security debate. President Obama enjoys high 70% approval ratings for his war against terrorism. As Andrew Sullivan remarked after the fall of Gaddafi, if Obama were a Republican he would be on Mount Rushmore by now. On this issue, the Republicans can only go negative.

Let's say the economy just poops along as it is and unemployment hits about 8% by the time of the election. Does anyone really believe any of the Republicans would have done better? Remember FDR won re-election with a higher unemployment, and Reagan won re-election with high unemployment. If the economy shows --let's say--3% growth rate next year, what becomes the compelling reason for voting republican, when all their economic programs currently call for vastly increasing taxes on the middle class. Some pundit said that the GOP has gone from Santa Clause to Scrooge.

So then the election has to be cast on ideological grounds. Is it time to dismantle the social safety net and shrink government? Should government really become so intrusive on social issues? And there I have no idea how the game would play out. The Republicans, which depend on the religious Right, will have to kowtow to their agenda and someone like Romney would have to place a firebreather on the ticket like McCain with Sarah Palin to excite the base.

So far, there is no there there. Which in my book means you have to go down mean and vile. Rick Perry has won all his elections be destroying his opponents' approval rating, not raising his. I think the GOP will have to get really in the dirt on this election.